Pink and Purple Skittle

Inspired by Nail Polish Society

Base (pink) - Jacava - Raspberry Bavarois

Base (purple) - Jacava - Lavender Court

Base (black) - Sally Hansen - Blacky O

Base (gold) - Barry M - Gold Digger

Stamping Plate - UberChic 14-03

January - Blues and Sparkle

January tends to be grey and miserable, so it's always nice to have pretty nails to brighten the month up.

I'd asked for some MoYou goodies for Christmas, so I decided to use them for my first  design for the month.

Ciaté Regatta was the perfect base for my MoYou Silver Dust stamping with SciFi Plate number 08.  I was a little disappointed that I managed to smudge my stamping when I added my top coat, but I was still happy with my design overall.

I love darker colours in the colder months, and hadn't used OPI Black Cherry Chutney for a while so thought I'd do a simple manicure with a glitter accent nail.  This colour is such a gorgeous deep purple red, and is perfect for a gothic look.  You can't see how pretty In True Stefani Fashion is in this photo, but trust me when I tell you, all the different shapes and sizes of the glitter really catch the light.

Despite the previous manicure to this one, and loving darker colours for winter, I've got a rather important even coming up in a few weeks time so want to steer clear of the darker shades for a bit to avoid any staining.  Bearing this in mind I decided to go for Heather from the Barry M Silk collection.  It's such a pretty and delicate colour on its own with a beautiful shimmer, but I couldn't resit adding a coat of NYC Lights, Camera, Glitter.  It has to be one of my all time favourite glitters and I have used it over many different base colours and haven't found a combination that I didn't like.  My mum looked for a new bottle of this one, as she likes it too, but couldn't find it in Superdrug, so I headed to Amazon, and bought three bottles to be sure we didn't run out any time soon!

I still can't decide whether my final design for the month was a nail fail or not.  I wanted to do a bit of a different kind of ombré across the nails rather than on all nails, so I chose Models Own Beth's Blue and Grape Juice.  I think the colours complimented each other and gave the ombré look, but I'm just not sure it's what I had in mind.  I added some little love hearts with Jacava Lavender Court to finish off the look.

My favourite this month has to be my sparkly Lights, Camera, Glitter, nails.  I can't resit sparkle and shine, so it just ticked all the right boxes.

Thanks for stopping by

Aimée x

October - Autumn Fun and Glitz

Autumn is my favourite month, I love all the changing colours and being able to snuggle up in cosy hoodies and boots.  I also love darker nails.

At the start of the month I went to see The Martian, so I decided to do some space nails.

Now I know that The Martian is about Mars, and that Mars is the red planet, but I thought that it was pretty fitting to use Rimmel's Space Dust in Total Eclipse polish for this manicure.  I love the MoYou Sci-Fi stamping plates, and this little astronaut is just so cute.

Barry M got it spot on with their limited edition glitter Gelly polishes, and I just couldn't resit them.  This is Sparkling Amethyst, and it's just stunning - I think it's made it's way into my list of favourite polishes.  I love the subtle glitter and beautiful shine of the Gelly formula.  I also got Sparkling Ruby, which will be making it's way into Christmas designs.

As I said before, I love the changing colours of the autumn leaves, so really wanted to do a manicure to reflect them.  I remembered that I had come across this design on Pinterest a while a ago and it gave me the inspiration for my falling leaves design.  I used Graffiti Nails Tuscany, Barry M Mushroom, and Bright Red, and Jacava Cherry Brandy for my autumnal colours.  I added in quite a few more dots and falling hearts than in the original design, and was worried that I might make a mess when drawing the tree, but I was really pleased with my design and it was my favourite this month.

I think it's part of nail law that in October you must do at least one Halloween design.  This year I had order some brilliant nail vinyls from She Sells Sea Shells, so it made my pumpkin nails really easy to do.  Tuscany from Graffiti Nails was the perfect base.  I got Taxi Cab from True Brit London and Queen Victoria Street Nails Inc, in my Nailbox subscription and both were perfect additions.  I think my pumpkin leaves look a bit more like hair than leaves, but they are still cute overall anyway.

Do you agree with my favourite this month or did you prefer one of my other designs more?  Make sure you follow me on Instagram to keep up with me weekly.

Thanks for stopping by

Aimée x

September - Pinks, Purples, and Glitter

Looking back over the past month I seem to have used lots of pinks, purples, and glitter, but hey, I'm not complaining.

Purples and pinks are my favourite colours so I'm not surprised that a had a whole month with a similar colour theme.

I started with Morgan Taylor's Bright Side with a glitter gradient.

Bright Side is a beautiful neon pink which dries to a matte finnish.  I used two coats here and you do need at least two coats as it's very streaky with just one.  I then used Holographic top coat from Nina Ultra Pro.  This has to be amongst my favourite glitters.  It catches the light and is jam packed with loads of sparkles.

During the month I was lucky enough to be sent some new colours from the Jacava Woodlanders collection to review, which you can see here.  I wore the grey base for a little while before I couldn't resit covering it in a coat of this super sparkly glitter, Glass Slipper from Accessorize.

This is my favourite design I have done in a while.  I have been doing some more simple things lately so decided to have a bit more fun with this one.  Being in a Autumn kind of place with another colour from the Jacava Woodlanders collection, I stamped some cute leaves and added some glitter and nail studs to match the theme.  I used Models Own Utopia for the base of the stamped nail and the golf glitter is Bora Bora, also from Models Own.

Last month I signed up to Nailbox, but just missed the cut off for the August box, but the September box was worth the wait.  I got this amazing Sinful Pro Shine polish, Show Off.  I was drawn to it like a moth to a flame when I opened the box so had to try it straight away.  I had placed an order a She Sell Sea Shells for some Nail Vinyls so thought that I'd try them out for some fun chevron accent nails with Turn On The Haute Light from OPI.

Do you have a favourite colour you find yourself reaching for all the time?  What colours are you loving this Autumn?

Thanks for stopping by

Aimée x

Jacava Woodlanders Collection AW15* - Jacava Competition Announcement

Jacava have gone and done it again - they have released seventeen brand new shades in their Autumn/Winter 2015 collection and they are bar far my favourites out of their entire range.  Autumn is my favourite season and I am partial to a dark nail, so when I was asked to review some of the new shades I jumped at the chance.  Make sure you read on to find out about Jacava's competition to win all 17 Woodlanders shades!

*Press sample - sent to me for review

Sweetheart Nail Art

Valentine's is just perfect for nail art as there are so many different things you can do - hearts, flowers, kisses, love letters, the list is endless.  I know I did hearts last week, but I couldn't resist sticking with them this week for this more girly heart print design.

I had a bit of a search through my stash to get together some pinks and reds (you can see them all on Instagram), and came across ones that I hadn't thought about in a while, including Jacava Raspberry Bavarois.  I absolutely love this colour so decided that it was going to be the main choice for this design.  It paints on so smoothly and is perfectly opaque in one coat.  I always use two coats for extra longevity on my nails.

I painted my index, middle, and little finger in pink and my thumb and ring finger in white.  Then using different sized dotting tools I created the hearts in Raspberry Bavarois and Strawberry Ice cream from Barry M.  Hearts are really easy to do, but look really effective.  All you have to do is get a good amount of polish on the end of your dotting tool and then drag diagonally downwards to form the point of the heart, then repeat the same again with another dot adjacent to the first.  There were still a few little gaps, so I added in a few little dots in both pinks.  I think they finished off the accent nails perfectly.

What's your favourite sort of design for Valentine's Day?  Leave me some links so I can see yours.  Also, keep an eye on my Instgram later in the week for another exciting Valentine's related post.

Thanks for stopping by

Aimée x

Polish Party: Halloween - Zombie Nails

Hi all,

Last month you may remember that Polish Party turned one!  I can't quite believe that it's been that long and that more and more people want to join in all the time.  With the group being around for a year, that does mean that themes may once or twice get repeated... but with a theme like Halloween this month, I'm not at all surprised.  There are so many different designs you can do for it.  You can see my design from last year here.  I've tended to edge more on the cute side for my Halloween nail art before and you can see that with my Monstrously Mini nails as well.  This time round I decided to go for something a bit more gruesome with some zombie nails.

Jacava: Too Hot To, Red Velvet, and Cherry Brandy*

Hi all,

I have some gorgeous colours from Jacava London to show you today.  These are some of their latests releases and are definitely brilliant additions to the Jacava family.

* Press sample - sent to me for review

Jacava: Raspberry Bavarois with Glitter

Hello all,

Hopefully yesterday you saw my review of Jacava Raspberry Bavarois.  I wanted to present it as just a plain colour for the review and I wanted to leave it on it's own to see how it well it lasted over a normal day (No chipping so hooray!).  But today I felt the need to add some nail art to it.  I haven't gone mad, but since I started doing nail art more and more, it seems very odd when I then don't have any!

I decided to try out a reverse glitter gradient with two Models Own colours, Magenta Divine and Hot Stuff.  I chose these two colours for my glitter gradient as they are the perfect match for Raspberry Bavarois.

I also chose these two colours as I hadn't tried a gradient like this before, so I didn't want it to be too obvious if it went a big wrong.  I started off with Magenta Divine for the base of the gradient, brushing most of the polish off the brush.  I then dabbed the polish that was left on the brush at the base of the nail by the cuticle.  Once all of the polish was on my nail I then dragged the brush from my cuticle down the nail, this spread a little bit of the glitter down the length of my nail.  I repeated this step again until I was happy with the look and then left this to dry.  To add an extra bit of sparkle I then dabbed some larger glitter pieces just by my cuticles using Hot Stuff.

I really love the effect, it almost looks like a waterfall of glitter down my nails! What do you think? Have you ever tried this before - leave a link in the comments to show me your version x 

Jacava: Raspberry Bavarois*

Hello all

Today I have a brand new polish that was sent to me for review by Jacava.  I was very excited to see their email pop up in my inbox asking me if I would like to review one of their colours.  I was able to pick from their range, there are 18 at the moment ranging from pinks, reds, purple, blue and green and there is also a selection of more neutral shades and a clear base coat / top coat.

I chose Raspberry Bavarois

Jacava polishes are '8 free', they say on their website -

'Opulent nail polish, by JACAVA London, is the world's first '8-free' nail varnish. That's free from DBP, Camphor, Formaldehyde, Toluene, Collophane, Parabens, Phthalates and Animal Ingredients. We never test on Animals and our nail polish is Vegan friendly.

All JACAVA nail polish uses premium, high gloss, long-lasting and nourishing formulation helps your nails stay stronger and grow longer. Designed in London and made in the UK, JACAVA is a quintessentially British nail polish brand.'